Download Constructing credible images: Documentary studies, social research

Constructing credible images:
Documentary studies, social research and visual studies
Jon Wagner
University of California, Davis
D R A F T January 26 2004
(To appear in “Visual Studies,” a special issue of the American Behavioral Scientist, 2004.
Gregory Stanczak, Guest Editor.)
1. Introduction
Scholars interested in culture and social life have puzzled for some time over
how to draw the line between social research and documentary studies,
documentary photography and film making in particular. Some social scientists
clearly embrace documentary studies as a vital complement to their own work, but
others dismiss them for a lack of rigor and depth, or for neglecting social theory in
favor of anecdotes, evocations and pretty pictures. Similarly, while some image
makers regard the social sciences as a valued foundation for documentary
photography and film making, others find them overly abstract and impersonal,
insensitive to a fault, pedantic, or beside the point.
For the past thirty years of so, the terms defining this divide have been shaped
for many social scientists by two seminal and complementary statements: John
Collier Jr.'s 1967 book, Visual Anthropology: Photography as a Research Method,
provided a thoughtful and encouraging account of how photographs could be used
to make durable, visual records of culture and social life and to interview research
subjects through a process of “photo elicitation.” Though he had worked previously
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as a documentary photographer in the Farm Security Administration, Collier’s 1967
monograph argued that the kind of image-making most appropriate to the social
sciences was systematic, deliberate and well-articulated with a traditional research
design. Howard Becker's 1974 essay on "Photography and Sociology” (Becker 1986b)
explicitly set aside the kind of systematic recording Collier recommended and made
a somewhat different argument: that social documentary photography itself shared
important elements of inquiry and representation with sociological work.
Figure 1
A photograph made by John Collier Jr. when he worked for the Farm Security
Administration. The original caption reads: “Red Cross distributing knitting
material. San Francisco, California, 1941.” Photo by John Collier Jr., courtesy of the
Library of Congress.
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In this essay I'll propose a framework that take the two kinds of image-making
that Becker and Collier teased apart and brings them together within a shared rubric
of empirical social inquiry. Within this framework, documentary photography and
visual social research are distinguished not so much by different logics of inquiry as
by contrasting social conventions for addressing three key challenges: creating
empirically credible images of culture and social life, framing empirical observations
to highlight new knowledge, and challenging existing social theory.
In presenting this case, I'll first describe what I mean by empirical inquiry,
visual social inquiry in particular, and where that fits within documentary studies
and social scientific practice. I’ll then review three recent documentary projects,
paying particular attention to how they address the inquiry challenges noted above.
A close look at these projects reveals several taken-for-granted features of social
research that warrant further inquiry. These include the preeminence of research
designs over personal accounts of observation and recording, a reliance on academic
communities in defining new knowledge, and an overweening attraction to explicit,
rather than implicit, statements of social theory.
Treating these features as working conventions of professional social
researchers, rather than as determinants of systematic, empirical inquiry per se,
could encourage more back and forth between social research and documentary
studies. Taking that prospect seriously could stimulate new kinds of visual studies
and enhance the value of empirical, visual inquiry in education, community
development and public discourse.
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2. Charting the empirical divide
For purposes of this essay I'll define empirical social inquiry as an effort to
generate new knowledge of culture and social life through the systematic collection
and analysis of sensory evidence and other forms of real world data. This definition
falls across and somewhat outside the conventions of both academic social science
and professional documentary work. It contrasts, for example, with the narrow view
held by some social researchers that empirical studies are necessarily quantitative. It
also contrasts with the convictions of some image-makers that social advocacy,
artistic vision and technical skill are, by themselves, enough to construct empirically
sound images.
Both social researchers and lay readers typically find images of culture and
social life to be more credible when they’re based on extensive and detailed
observation in an appropriate array of natural settings, backed up by other data, and
presented in ways that invite analysis, including commentary from the people they
depict. But photographs can support empirical inquiry in ways that don’t always
square with popular notions of what makes them “true” or “false,” and there’s a
danger in trying to turn these notions into categorical prohibitions or ideals.
For example, we are understandably suspicious of photographs that reflect
contrived poses or processing distortions or that come with captions that
misrepresent an image’s origins or typicality. But posed photographs provide
valuable evidence of how people want to be seen by others (Pinney 1997; Ruby 1995)
and photographed re-enactments can generate credible visual records not otherwise
available (Kroeber 2002; Rieger 2003). Similarly, while page layouts featuring
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severely cropped and juxtaposed images can create false impressions, they can also
highlight theoretically significant details and comparisons.
Figure 2 & 3
Using a “peeling spud” made from an old car spring, semi-retired logger Ernie
Toivonen demonstrates in 1990 the hand craft of debarking a tree in Ontonagon
County, Michigan. In the course of an interview with the sociologist Jon Rieger,
Toivonen offered to “show him how it was done” prior to mechanization of the pulp
wood industry in the 1970’s and 80’s. Following up on Toivonen’s invitation to reenact this technique, Rieger photographed aspects of a logger’s craft that were no
longer practiced and for which no historical images were to be found. Both
photographs by Jon Rieger.
These ambiguities are complicated by the routine fabrications of social life,
including the social life it takes to conduct empirical inquiry. For example, while
evidence can be collected systematically within specific data categories – time lapse
photographs of people crossing a street; census reports of race, income and ethnicity;
or sociometric charts of child friendships – the categories and data collection tools
that guide work of this sort are themselves socially constructed.
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Some people have taken this to mean that we should forget about empirical
inquiry altogether, but it leads me to recommend doing somewhat more of it rather
than less. It seems a bit foolish, for example, to dismiss a number, chunk of text or
photograph just because it’s been “socially constructed.” It’s difficult to imagine
anything that’s not! A better bet would be to examine the construction process itself
for what we can learn, not only about the number, text chunk or image, but about the
social contexts in which they are shaped and distributed.
Which leads me back to Collier and Becker, each of whom affirmed, in
complementary fashions, the value of photographs as durable and useful records of
what was visible in a particular time and place. It’s not always easy make those
records in the way we will later find most useful, nor is it a simple matter to
understand what images made by others fairly depict or neglect. Indeed, the idea
that photographs and other machine-recorded data can be generated without human
agency and choice of any sort is both naive and misguided, but so is the idea that a
photographer’s selectivity in one dimension makes an image wholly suspect in all
others (Schwartz 1999). With this in mind, the credibility and utility of photographs
within empirical social inquiry rests not so much on whether they accurately reflect
or arbitrarily invent the real world, but on how those aspects of the real world they
invent or reflect are related to questions we care about (Becker 1986a). To understand
that we need something more than the photograph itself.
Research designs and personal accounts
One tool for helping researchers and their audiences judge what a set of
photographs might contribute to a project of empirical inquiry is the research design,
an explicit description of how a study is organized and how the right kind of
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evidence can be brought bear in answering pre-determined questions. By and large,
that's where social scientists place their own trust and hope. Regardless of the kinds
of data they choose to examine, a good research design advances the claim that the
researcher has conducted (or is about to conduct) an empirically sound investigation.
Relying on research designs to advance these claims suggests that the main
threats to empirical inquiry are those that a research design can guard against.
Towards that end, statements by social scientists frequently do a good job of
accounting for sample size, for example, and for site selection, the wording of survey
questions, or the preparation of appropriate observation schedules and coding
strategies. But social science research designs are typically silent about other
potential pitfalls. They rarely note the full range of an investigator's interest in a topic
or a study site, or preview indeterminate features of the research process, or describe
the researcher’s honesty, interpersonal skills, or an ability to elicit cooperation and
useful information from research subjects. Leaving these potentially problematic
elements out of a research design affirms a world in which the researcher’s role
dominates the researcher, in which research designs transcend observation and
inquiry crafts.
Personal accounts represent another tool for establishing the credibility of
empirical social inquiry. They’re used rarely by professional social researchers
(though efforts to clarify a researcher’s “positionality” are of a kindred sort) but
frequently by documentary image-makers. Some such accounts are infused within
the body of a documentary project itself, the way James Agee spoke for himself and
Walker Evans in Let us Now Praise Famous Men (Agee and Evans 1960 [1939]). In
other instances, they appear as forewords, afterwards, and in interviews that
documentary image makers give about their work (Light 2000; Loengard 1998; Lyons
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1966; Morris 1999). In the aggregate, these narrative accounts by documentary image
makers affirm a world in which persons shape inquiry, in which and the craft of
inquiry transcends the research design.
When considered together, research designs and personal accounts reveal
multiple and complementary dimensions along which empirical inquiries can be
more or less well-grounded and well- executed. These dimensions apply to issues of
data collection and analysis and to many other choices investigators make as they go
about their work – deciding when data are complete enough to warrant analysis,
selecting details to report as illustrations and examples, choosing a starting point for
introducing or framing a study, pitching descriptions to a particular level of
abstraction or generality, identifying or cultivating audiences for which a study
might be of interest, and so on.
By paying attention to how these choices affect the truthfulness of their work,
social researchers and documentary image makers stand on the same side of the
empirical divide. This separates their work from other ways of approaching the
world – divine revelation, for example, or fantasy making, psychological projection,
speculation, and demagoguery. Individual social researchers and documentary
image makers are never completely free from these contrary inclinations. However,
within idealized forms of the work in which they are engaged, the latter appear as
liabilities, shortcomings, and failures. The logic of empirical inquiry requires that
they be addressed, at times by avoiding inventions of the investigator, at other times
by bringing them into play.
Inventions and reflections
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Social researchers, photographers and artists can be more or less selfconscious about what their accounts and reports have added to what they’ve seen.
Walker Evans, for example, referred to his work not as documentary photography,
but as "art done in a documentary style" (Hambourg et al. 2000). Other documentary
image makers have been less careful or held contrary beliefs. In his prejudicial
framing, selection and printing of supposedly realistic images, W. Eugene Smith may
be more the rule than the exception among well known documentary photographers
(de Miguel 2002). Even realist landscape photographers such as Ansel Adams (who
railed against the subjectivities of "pictorialism") have adjusted the tone, contrast and
framing of their photographs to better express their own strongly held ideas about
how the places they photographed "should look" (Brower 1998). Other documentary
photographers have done much the same in depicting culture and social life.
Figure 4
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Photo by Walker Evans, courtesy of the Library of Congress. The original caption
reads, “Movie theatre on Saint Charles Street. Liberty Theater, New Orleans,
Louisiana. 1935-36.” Evans described his work not as documentary photography but
as “art done in a documentary style.”
In thinking through where the inventions of documentary image makers fit
along what I've called the "empirical divide," there's much to learn from the work of
social researchers themselves. Stimulated in part by the seminal work of Becker and
Collier, scholarly writing in this area has increased substantially in recent years
through monographs (Banks 2001; Biella 1988; Emmison and Smith 2000; Harper
1982; Harper 1987; Harper 2002; Pink 2001; Ruby 2000), edited collections (Prosser
1998) and an expanded array of journals (Visual Studies, The Journal of Visual
Studies, The Journal of Visual Culture, Visual Anthropology, Visual Anthropology
Review, etc.). However, methodological treatments of image work within the social
science literature are dominated by issues of research design to the neglect of
personal vision and craft.
Personal accounts by documentary photographers can alert us to other ways
of thinking about empirical, visual inquiry. Dorothea Lange (Lyons 1966), for
example, displayed prominently over her desk the following quotation from Sir
Francis Bacon, an early statesman for empirical inquiry: "The contemplation of things
as they are, without substitution of imposture, without error or confusion, is in itself
a nobler thing than a whole harvest of invention.” Lange arranged, cropped,
sequenced, and edited her photographs to make documents that went beyond, in
meaning and social impact, her camera's capacity to record the visible details she
aimed it at (Coles 1997). However, she also appears to have taken Bacon's statement
seriously, at the very least as an alternative to the commercial work that occupied her
attention prior to explicitly documentary projects and assignment.
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Figure 5 & 6
These two images were both made from the same Dorothea Lange photograph. Lange
printed the image on the left “full frame,” but cropped it to create the image on the
right and focus on the man and his expression of despair. Both photographs by
Dorothea Lange, courtesy of the Library of Congress.
An empirical ideal for photographic purpose was also championed by Wright
Morris, a documentary photographer, fiction writer and essayist. Morris (Morris
1999) argued that, "We should make the distinction, while it is still clear, between
photographs that mirror the subject, and images that reveal the photographer. One is
intrinsically photographic, the other is not." However, in what looks at first like a
contradiction to the “mirror” ideal, Morris also noted: "Only fiction will
accommodate the facts of life," adding that, " Our choice, in so far as we have one, is
not between fact and fiction, but between good and bad fiction."
Considered in light of his other writing, Morris’s statment reveals what I’ve
come to regard as a radical or root appreciation of empirical inquiry that is hard to
find within the social science literature per se. At the heart of this perspective are two
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key ideas Morris developed more fully in both his photography and writing: First,
that every account of "the facts of life" will reflect some forms of inventiveness by
investigators and reporters , not just in making photographs, or putting words on a
page, or quantifying variables, but in linking observations of any sort to concepts,
theories, or narratives – what Charles Ragin (Ragin 1992) refers to as "casing".
Second, depending on the intention, skill and integrity of the investigator , these
inventions can move an account closer to or farther away from "things as they are."
Morris did not examine this provocative link between empirical inquiry and
fiction in social scientific terms, but James Clifford (Clifford and Marcus 1986) did
just that, a few decades later in characterizing "ethnography as fiction," but a kind of
fiction that's not necessarily false or untrue (1986: 6). In Clifford’s perspective,
rhetorical "inventions" fall squarely within the tool kit of empirical social inquiry, not
as a substitute for detailed observation and systematic analysis, but as their
handmaiden. As Sara Pink (Pink 2001), Doug Harper (Harper 1998) and others have
noted, this argument can apply as well to the “rhetoric” of photographic
representation.
The necessity of invention and rhetoric to productive empirical inquiry does
not mean that "anything goes." However, it might be necessary to use artificial
lighting to make a photograph that looks like what we can see in the field under
"natural light," or to re-sequence raw film footage so that events and settings are
more comprehensible and clear. To get comparable, empirically sound information,
experienced field researchers recognize that they may need to alter a line of
questioning from one informant to another. Along the same lines, it might be
necessary to use different lenses, vantage points, or image making strategies in one
setting than in another. In some cases, a researcher might have to move objects
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around so that they can be better seen and recorded. There's also much to be learned
about culture and social life from how participants respond to outsiders, including
outsiders who come with cameras, video tape recorders and questions that might
otherwise never be asked (Biella 1988).
As Morris intimated, the choice is not between truth and invention, but
between inventions that lead towards truths and those that lead away from them.
This ties the soundness of empirical inquiry not only to techniques and methods, but
the ethics and integrity of the investigator. Though reflection and invention are not
quite the same as objectivity and subjectivity, Robert Coles (Coles 1997) speaks for
both sets of terms in noting that, “To take stock of others is to call upon oneself – as a
journalist, a writer, a photographer, or a doctor or a teacher. This mix of the objective
and the subjective is a constant presence and, for many of us, a constant challeng –
what blend of the two is proper, and at what point shall we begin to cry ‘foul’?”
3. Three exemplary projects
A radical or root appreciation of empirical inquiry is hard to define beyond
statements of principles such as those provided by Wright Morris or Francis Bacon,
or critiques of scientism such as those offered by Marcus, Pink, and others, or a call to
honesty and thoughtfulness such as that provided by Coles. It certainly doesn't turn
neatly into a checklist of methodological do's and don'ts. And it falls far short of (or
extends beyond, depending on your point of view) explicit guidelines for collecting
or analyzing specific kinds of data – photographs or video tapes, interview
transcripts, survey responses, or census tract figures. In the simplest terms, it calls for
nothing more and nothing less than trying to ground ideas about the world as much
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as possible in observations of the world, to notice what's visible and account for it in
ways that "get it right."
Many social scientists spend their working lives trying to come as close as
they reasonably can to this ideal. As illustrated by the three projects described below,
so too do some documentary photographers. While none of these projects has been
embraced as bona fide "social research" by professional sociologists or
anthropologists, each reflects a systematic approach to empirical inquiry, the intent
to create new knowledge and an effort to extend and refine social theory. After
briefly describing these projects, I'll turn to two related questions: First, how does the
kind of empirical inquiry we find in these three projects differ from what we've come
to expect from social scientists? Second, what implications do these differences have
for empirical, visual studies of culture and social life?
Material World
Few documents provide a more provocative depiction of social and economic
inequality than the book, Material World: A Global Family Portrait (Menzel 1994), a
survey in photographs, text and statistics of the household possessions and routines
of a single family from each of 30 countries. In the 6-8 pages allotted to each of these
families, the authors present a wide range of data: a demographic profile and a
paragraph or two about each country; an array of captioned photographs showing
the "daily life" of family members; a summary of each family's possessions and living
space, including the "most valued possession" identified by different family
members; and a brief account by the photographer. For each family we also are
provided with what Menzel calls the "Big Picture," a single large photograph of
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family members standing or seated among all their possessions, outside their home.
These provocative images are interesting in their own right. They are rendered more
informative by a legend that identifies objects and people and a list in the Appendix
of additional objects not included in the photo (p. 253).
Figure 7
The Namgay family, Shinka, Bhutan, 1993. Photo by Peter Menzel
Both photographs and text of Material World are clearly designed for impact,
but pains were taken to make the impact empirically credible. The book provides a
list of references and data sources and a table comparing all 30 countries on 22
different demographic variables. The selection of families is also described in enough
detail, individually and in the aggregate, to alert readers to important qualifications
and sampling questions and to provide some sense of the immediate circumstances
in which photographers worked. In his own account photographing the family
portrayed in Figure 7, for example, Menzel writes:
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For six days I lived with the Namgay family in a twelve-house village an
hour's walk from a 7-mile dirt road off a small paved road four hours from
Thumphy, the capital. The Namgays had never seen a TV, an airplane, or for
that matter a live American before and were as curious about me as I was
about them. I had dinner with a different family every night, the same basic
good food that I ate gladly with one hand as my legs ached from sitting crosslegged on the floor (My other hand fanned the flies from my food). . .Wild
marijuana grows everywhere, but villagers feed it to their pigs after boiling it.
The sounds were incredible: women singing in the fields as they harvested
wheat, the murmur of monks chanting, the squeal of children playing, all
without the haze of electronic noise I have unfortunately come to take for
granted. On the other hand, all was not paradisiacal. Animals and people
excreted just outside the house and the family cooked inside on an open fire.
(p. 78).
Figure 8
An English lesson in the school attended by 12 year old Bangum Namgay, an hour’s
trek from her home in Shinka, Bhutan, 1993. Photo by Peter Menzel.
We don't know from this comment alone exactly how Menzel decided what to
photograph, but we do get some insight into the cultural contrasts and personal
dispositions that shaped his image-making in the field.
A sympathetic reading of Material World requires that we ignore, at least for
the moment, the cultural and economic diversity within each country. However,
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Menzel presents the book not to challenge or discourage that kind of complexity, but
to resist another kind of simplification. As he notes: “Newspaper, magazine and
television stories almost always deal with the extremes: famine, flood, mass killing,
and, of course, the life-styles of the rich and famous. . . I wanted to give some insight
into the rest of the world.” (p. 255).
Figure 9
The Skeen Family, Pearland, Texas, 1993. Photo by Peter Menzel.
The empirical value of Material World rests in part upon the study design, in
part upon an ability to elicit cooperation from the families themselves. This
cooperation was inextricably tied to both data collection and reporting. Indeed, the
power of the Material World accounts, family by family, and country by country,
hangs on making the visual comparisons and contrasts somewhat systematic. This
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applies with special force to the "Big Picture." Inventories of household possessions
have been described by anthropologists such as Collier (1967), Oscar Lewis (Lewis
1965), and Janet Hoskins (Hoskins 1998). But they are given added punch by the
technical virtuosity and documentary skill of the Material World photographers. As
anyone who has tried it can attest, it is no small matter to arrange diverse materials
so that they can all be seen at the same time, let alone to light and focus the array in
ways that will produce a well-exposed and legible image.
Figure 10
The Qampie Family, Soweto, South Africa, 1993. Photo by Peter Menzel.
The same technical and representational skills that Material World
photographers used to create empirically sound images could also be used to
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misrepresent culture and social life. We don't know for a fact that they weren't used
in just that way, though we have many indications that this was not their intent. It's
also clear that families willing to sit for such extended and intrusive "portraits' might
differ somewhat from those who were not so inclined. And the idea of finding one
family from each country flies in the face of more comprehensive and differentiated
surveys. Though the imperfections of this research design are acknowledged rather
than concealed, some readers might take them seriously enough to wholly dismiss
what Material World has to offer. However, a more appropriate test of empirical
merit is framed by the following two questions: Do we know more about social and
economic inequality between different countries as a result of this book, or less? And
is what we know well grounded enough in empirical evidence to challenge
speculation and ignorance? For some kinds of speculation and ignorance, I certainly
think it is.
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Girl Culture
Figure 11
Two 15-year old girls try on clothes in a dressing room. San Jose, California. Photo by
Lauren Greenfield.
The questions noted above are also worth considering in connection with
Lauren Greenfield's documentary study Girl Culture (Greenfield 2002). Like the
creators of Material World, Greenfield seems intent on "getting it right" empirically –
recording what she sees and what her subjects have to say in ways that both
document and raise questions about culture and social life. Indeed, the artful
juxtaposition of comments and images from different but related scenes is, in her
hands, a tool of both personal and collective inquiry. In one cluster of photographs,
for example, she records a range of women and girls working on their appearances in
mirrors. Through another set of photographs, she shows a diverse array of girls and
women in different forms of "dressing up" (Figures 12, 13 and 14).
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Figure 12
Augusta, 22, the newly crowned Queen of the Cotton Ball, Chattanooga, Tennessee.
Photo by Lauren Greenfield.
Figure 13
Exotic dancer Tammy Boom backstage at Little Darlings, Las Vegas, Nevada. Photo
by Lauren Greenfield.
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Figure 14
Elita, 6, at a birthday party where girls have their hair and makeup done, play dressup, model in a fashion show, and have a tea party, Hollywood, California.
Photo by Lauren Greenfield.
In putting together images of this sort, Greenfield suggests the fundamentally
"exhibitionist" dimension of feminine identity, a theme that plays back and forth
between mass market icons and personal appearance. As Greenfield puts it, "The
body is the primary canvas on which girls express their identities, insecurities,
ambitions and struggles. I have documented this phenomenon and at the same time
explore how this canvas is marked by the values and semiotics of the surrounding
culture." As an important variation on this theme, she also reminds us that the
exhibitionist equation works well only for a few women whose physiognomy
matches well-advertised icons, and not even that well for those. This encourages, as
Greenfield sees it, the constant scrutiny and disaffection that women express towards
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their own bodies and heightens the temptations of plastic surgery or physical selfabuse.
Figure 15
Erin, 24, is blind-weighed at an eating-disorder clinic, Coconut Creek, Florida. She
has asked to mount the scale backward so as not to see her weight gain. Photo by
Lauren Greenfield.
In much the same way that Erving Goffman (Goffman 1963) called attention to
the "total institution" as an ideal type that could characterize quite diverse
organizations (prisons, monasteries, mental hospitals, boarding schools, and so on),
Greenfield's work calls attention to "girl culture" as an ideal typical configuration of
values, practices and ideas through which women define and display their sexual
identity. As she puts it, "Understanding the dialectic between the extreme and the
mainstream – the anorectic and the dieter, the stripper and the teenager who bares
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her midriff or wears a thong – is essential to understanding contemporary feminine
identity."
Like the authors of Material World, Greenfield combines powerful
photographs with other data, including extended interview comments by the
subjects of her study. In keeping with her intentions, these commentaries give her
treatment of "girl culture" empirical depth and complexity. "As the photographs are
my voice," she notes, "the interviews give voice to the girls." The credibility of
Greenfield's work is also enhanced by the candor and caution she expresses in
describing her own "inventiveness" and vision. She acknowledges that while the
photographs "are about the girls I photographed . . . They're also about me." At
another point, she reminds us that, "Infinite choices were made in the subject matter,
the point of view, in the moment I depressed the shutter, in the editing. Ultimately,
Girl Culture looks at a wide spectrum of girls through a very narrow prism."
In another parallel to Material Culture, it's not just the photographs and
interviews that create the "new knowledge" of Girl Culture, but the comparative
framework within which Greenfield has placed them – in this case comparing
women across age groups and social status instead of countries. Thoughtfully framed
and sequenced, her photographs create a credible, multi-dimensional account, a kind
of meta-image that both references and questions other images of women with which
we are already familiar.
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The Great Central Valley
Figure 16
Wind gap pumping station, California Aqueduct, Kern County, 1985. Photo by
Stephen Johnson.
The Great Central Valley: California’s Heartland, is a collaborative social
history prepared by photographers Steven Johnson and Robert Dawson and the
essayist and novelist Gerald Haslam (Johnson, Dawson and Haslam 1993). The book
combines an extraordinary array of visual materials and a lengthy text that includes
personal accounts, observations and reviews scholarship from a wide range of
disciplines-economics, agronomy, anthropology, and so on. These varied materials
are organized as convincing empirical evidence of the changing life and culture of
the Central Valley of California. In the same chapter, we can find Farm Security
Administration (FSA) photographs from the 1930's, contemporary black and white
photos from made in the same geographical area (that look as if they could have been
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taken by FSA photographers), contemporary color photographs of both old and new
icons, other old photographs (some of which have been re-photographed), satellite
photographs, maps, and the reproduction of a landscape painting.
Figure 17
Johnnie, Merced, California, 1975. Photo by Stephen Johnson.
Like the creators of Material World and Girl Culture, the authors of California
Heartland describe the process of their own creation, in this case through another
book by Johnson called Making the Digital Book (Johnson 1993). This companion
volume provides additional details about how California Heartland was designed
and put together, both technically and conceptually. We learn that a pre-release
version of Adobe Photoshop allowed Johnson to improve the legibility of old
photographs by removing "cracks, serious scratches, and other artifacts of age," and
that he also altered "contrast and brightness" to make some images more legible, but
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that the digital photo editing only went so far: "I was careful to respect the integrity
of the original, however, and did not remove or add any real objects." Johnson's
account of how ideas within the book came forth is equally explicit.
Once I had settled on a basic grid [for the design], my primary task was to find
a relationship between the text and photographs that was integrated, but not
directly illustrative. That really was the largest single design challenge, and
the most time consuming. I had to know the photographs, read every word of
the text, and imagine relationships."
We might like to know more about the process by which Johnson "imagined"
relationships between words and images in preparing California Heartland, but the
detail he has provided – including how he chose to present this study to others –
goes well beyond what we'd expect from a social science research design
Figure 18
Used cans, crop-dusting airstrip, Newman, California, 1984. Photo by Stephen
Johnson.
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28
Figure 19
Discovery Bay, San Joaquin Delta, 1985. Photo by Stephen Johnson
4. Documentary and Scientific Conventions
I've tried to make the case, in an abbreviated way, that these three visual
studies all provide credible, empirical accounts of culture and social life without
necessarily respecting the conventions of contemporary social research. That's
especially true for how the documentary image makers conducting these studies
addressed the three challenges I noted earlier: creating empirically sound images of
culture and social life, framing observations to highlight new knowledge, and
challenging existing theory. Let's look at each of these in more detail.
Creating empirically sound images
All three documentary studies make extensive use of recorded images to
represent how culture and social life looks in particular times and places, and the
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29
images themselves provide a kind of information that’s hard to represent in text
alone. This is true not only for the sheer wealth of visual detail, but for the precise
imaging of physical and social environments from particular viewpoints, the
juxtaposition of contrasting images, and the sequences and formats in which we
encounter images as readers. Indeed, the photographs in these three studies go well
beyond the common social science trope of “illustrating” ideas that are otherwise
well accounted for in text. They provide instead a kind of content that is analytically
interesting in its own right.
In arguing for the credibility of this content, these documentary image makers
give more attention to challenges of "recording" good evidence than do most social
researchers. In Material World, for example, we find not only a description of how
the photographs were made in general, but individual accounts from photographers
about each family they photographed. The two photographers working on
California’s Heartland each offer accounts of what they were doing,
photographically, in studying the Great Central Valley, as does Greenfield for her
work with Girl Culture.
The origins of these documentary studies are also described in terms that are
more personal and situational than is typical for social science study designs.
Greenfield notes that she was “enmeshed in girl culture before I was a photographer,
and I was photographing girl culture before I realized I was working on Girl
Culture." Johnson reports that he "embarked on the Central Valley project to better
understand the place that made me a landscape photographer." Menzel's account of
what led him to the kind of data reported in Material World refers not only to the
United Nation's International Year of the Family (1994) and his previous work as a
photo journalist, but to a program he heard on the radio about marketing a sex-
wagner – constructing credible images 04-01-263
30
fantasy book by the pop star Madonna: “The book and the singer seemed to hold
more interest for people than the pressing issues of our day. I thought the world
needed a reality check" (p. 255).
Evidence about how individual images were made and the personal interests
of the researcher does not in itself make investigations more empirically sound – but
see Biella (Biella 1988) and Ruby (Ruby 1976) for contrasting views on this. However,
it can help us determine how close a study comes to hitting its empirical marks. A
research design can help in that regard as well, of course, and that suggests the value
of providing both, along with some sense of where the author thinks the findings of a
study might or might not apply. For example, Greenfield contends that "Girl Culture
is my photographic examination of an aspect of our culture that leaves few women
untouched," but she also cautions that the book "does not attempt to represent the
experience of all girls in American, or even the full and rich experience of any girl I
photographed."
Highlighting new knowledge
Lots of information is available to people that they don't care about, or think
they already have, or reject, but new information can sometimes adds a new
dimension to how we think about things. The uncertainties of this process present a
real challenge for people who want to undertake empirical social inquiry. Who will
care about the particular inquiry they have in mind? And what forms are available
for presenting new knowledge to those particular people?
The answers social researchers develop to these questions almost always
involve publishing articles and books for specialized academic communities and
markets. As they see it, for knowledge to be really "new," it has to new for colleagues
wagner – constructing credible images 04-01-263
31
already hard at work studying related questions and phenomena. Documentary
image makers approach this challenge somewhat differently. They're not particularly
interested in creating knowledge that appears to be "new" only to small groups of
social scientists. Like social researchers, they would like their work recognized and
well-regarded by professional peers. But documentary image makers also pitch their
inquiries to other audiences, including the subjects of their study and other people
like them, and to members of the public who may harbor ideas about the visual
evidence they've put together.
As one step towards reaching this broader audience, some documentarians
(including those I've described here) present their work as the result of a personal
journey that led to new insights and understanding. Johnson notes that while making
photographs for California Heartland began on familiar footing it "grew into the
discovery of a place I didn't know very well. It became an exploration of land use,
water use, agricultural practices, racism and poverty." In establishing points of
personal connection with both professional and public audiences, Greenfield reports
that, "Girl Culture has been my journey as a photographer, as an observer of culture,
as part of the media, as a media critic, as a woman, as a girl." This personal and
public rhetoric contrasts with how social researchers index their own reports to
specific research publications and communities (Richardson 1991).
The documentary image-makers reviewed here also give much more attention
than social researchers usually do to issues of editing, layout and visual
representation. Not only do they make explicit the aesthetic dimensions of this work,
they link design issues directly to both analysis and audience. I've already noted
Johnson's extended account of what it took to prepare California Heartland in book
form, but Menzel and Greenfield also offer explicit commentary about designing
wagner – constructing credible images 04-01-263
32
their books. As another illustration of this emphasis, Greenfield distinguishes her
contributions to Girl Culture from other instances in which the same photographs
appeared for other purposes: "While I often can't control the picture editing, writing
and design in my work for magazines, the selection and presentation of photographs
in this book are my own."
For all three documentary image makers and authors, the boundary between
research subjects and public communities is also blurred, all the more so because
each has encouraged distribution of this work in other forms. California Heartland
was at first a documentary project, then an exhibit in the Central Valley itself and a
symposium, then a book, and later a book about the book. Girl Culture also began as
a documentary project, elements of which appeared in mass market publications,
and the book is now complemented by a traveling photo exhibit and a web site that
includes an on-line photo gallery, transcripts of all 20 interviews reported on in the
book, a teaching guide, links to organizations working on related issues, video
interviews with Greenfield, and an opportunity to participate in related on-line
forums. The work brought together in Material Culture has also appeared in other
publications, and a CD Rom is now available that both replicates and extends the
content of the book. Taken together, these diverse activities and media provide a
larger and more variegated public presence than we would expect from a publication
alone, let alone a publication addressed primarily to social scientists.
The "new knowledge" available to research subjects and the public through
these documentary materials is available to sociologists and anthropologists as well,
but it’s not inscribed in mainstream social science journals. Because these
documentary image makers have not framed their work in terms of social research
per se, it's not clear where it would fit to best advantage in those venues. But the
wagner – constructing credible images 04-01-263
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rhetorical conventions of published social research – the emphasis on words and
numbers, accompanied at times by figures and charts, organized around arguments
and summarized "findings" – is also problematic in its own terms for documentary
image makers.
These problems become apparent when we try to imagine converting any of
these three studies into standard social science reports. An abstract or synopsis of
each might be noteworthy, but would also fall far short of the new knowledge we're
likely to acquire from reading each work as a whole, some of which occurs as a
process of elicited meaning and inquiry. As Paul Kennedy notes in his introduction
to Material Culture (p. 7), "The real benefit to learning that the reader can extract
from this project depends on going into the details, especially on a comparative basis.
New kinds of valuable inquiry can be generated by such detailed observation,” (i.e.
“observing” the book itself.)
As a related point of contrast, the balance between evidence and interpretation
in the documentary projects reviewed here is weighted more towards evidence than
is customary for social science research reports. That may make documentary studies
somewhat more ambiguous than social scientific reports, but it does not make them
any less empirical.
Challenging social theory
Girl Culture includes an introduction by Joan Jacobs Brumberg, a professor of
human development and women's studies at Cornell, and in her own commentary,
Greenfield refers to a few scholarly studies that helped shape her thoughts.
California Heartland is heavily referenced to the work of historians, geographers,
and policy analysts. And Material World lists numerous sources that someone could
wagner – constructing credible images 04-01-263
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consult to learn more about the countries and issues it examines. However, just as
none of these projects take social researchers per se as their primary audience, neither
do they frame insights to readers as a contribution to academic scholarship. Johnson
is quite explicit about his interest in avoiding both romantic and academic genres:
"None of us wanted this project to become another photography book idealizing a
landscape," he notes, "Nor did we want the book to become an historical
dissertation."
This apparent neglect of disciplinary scholars goes hand in hand with the
interest of documentary image makers in attracting other audiences. However, it also
reflects alternatives ideas about where social theories are most likely to be found,
acquired and contested. The “theories” that social scientists pay the most attention to
are inscribed explicitly in published social science texts. Documentarians might
acknowledge this kind of theory as well. But they also attend to a wide range of
cultural materials in which social theories are more embedded than explicated –
texts, of course, but also news accounts, folklore and mass media imagery. Instead of
contested theories and hypotheses, the documentary projects I've described here are
designed to highlight contrasting ideas and imagery.
These image-based challenges to social theory can mirror exchanges among
academics about different theoretical perspectives, interpretations, and data sets, but
they can take other forms as well. For example, Johnson and his associates reproduce
in California Heartland some policy documents and photographs that they then call
into question through juxtapositions with other documents, their own photographs
or through the testimony of local participants. Greenfield both photographs and
critiques some of the images that the people she studied respond to in constructing
their identities. With admirable candor, she notes also that as a journalist, she helped
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make some of those images herself. Menzel saw Material World not only as a way to
illustrate "the great differences in material goods and circumstances that make rich
and poor societies," but to challenge less credible ideas, some of them supported by
images he had helped create through previous photographic assignments. In each
case the documentary photographs presented by these authors are framed to
challenge other images that reflect existing, largely implicit and widely held ideas
about culture and social life – elements of social theory, by any other name.
5. Empirical Inquiry and Public Discourse
In terms of empirical social inquiry, the documentary studies I've described
above are exemplary. Other studies that are called "documentary" simply because
they include “realistic” photographs of people and places may actually fall more
appropriately on the other side of the empirical divide, where speculation,
projection, fantasy and introspection hold sway. We can approach work on either
side of that divide without prejudice, and projects that straddle it can be stimulating
and provocative. However, in looking to documentary image-making for empirically
sound accounts of culture and social life, I suggest we seek works – such as those I've
reviewed here – that not only "look interesting" but reflect a clear commitment to
empirical inquiry.
Having said that, if we think of Girl Culture, California Heartland, and
Material World only as "documentary" work, we isolate what we can learn about
empirical inquiry through projects of this sort from how we think about social
research. A more productive strategy is to consider each project as an instance of
wagner – constructing credible images 04-01-263
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empirical social inquiry, analytically defined. Instead of asking, "What's the
difference between documentary photography, narrative accounts and sociology or
anthropology?" we might ask, "How does empirical social inquiry look when
practiced by skilled sociologists or anthropologists, and how does it look when
practiced by skilled documentary photographers, journalists and essayists?
As a partial answer to these questions, I’ve summarized in Table 1 some of the
contrasts noted above between social science and documentary studies. These
contrasts suggest that in some circumstances one approach to empirical social
inquiry might work better than the other. For example: If we want to build a written
literature around a distinctive set of concepts and questions – a disciplinary tradition,
so to speak – the conventions of social science have the most to offer. Why? Because
they require that new work be tightly indexed to the work of other scholars who
have wrestled in writing with similar questions and concepts, a kind of intertextuality that both reflects and stimulates the evolution of a literate community. But
if we care less about literature building than about communicating with diverse
constituents, documentary work with images has real advantages of its own.
These advantages certainly apply to the challenge of informing public
discourse, but they also have special relevance for human service professionals
working in diverse communities. Teachers, for example, as well as social workers,
community organizers, and health care professionals, may find documentary
conventions more agreeable and productive than social scientific approaches in
studying local clients and communities. They don't need to know if new ground is
being broken for the disciplines of psychology, sociology or anthropology to learn
something valuable from looking at video tapes of student small group discussions;
37
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Table 1
Two Modes of Empirical Social Inquiry
Social Science
Documentary Study
Purpose
Develop new knowledge and
understanding of culture and social life
through empirical investigation and
scholarly “works.”
Develop new knowledge and
understanding of culture and social life
through empirical investigation and public
“works.”
Research
design
Dedication to explicit research design,
including a priori rationale for linking
questions with appropriate data sources,
scope of data desired, identification of
analysis strategies, etc.; emphasizes
testing ideas through narrowly bounded
inquiry; separation of personal interest
from logic of inquiry
Casual attention to research design;
implicit and diffuse statement of research
questions, data sources, etc.; emergent
rather than a priori focus and questions;
emphasizes exploring, investigating and
examining phenomenon, place, people or
idea through broadly bounded inquiry;
integration of personal interest and logic of
inquiry
Data sources
Direct observation, field recording of
images and interviews, found artifacts,
etc. plus surveys, analysis of aggregate
data sets, etc.
Direct observation, field recording of
images and interviews, found artifacts, etc.
Data
collection
Emphasis on getting enough data points
to meet requirements spelled out in
research design; larger sample size
preferred to more detailed observation of
particulars.
Explicit attention to recording challenges
and media; interest in presentation quality
documents and data sources. More
detailed observations preferred to larger
sample size.
Data
analysis
Precursor to reporting and
representation; systematic use of discrete
analysis strategies; analysis restricted to
bounded data sets
Closely integrated with issue of
representation; push towards coherence
and clarity through multiple analysis
strategies; unrestricted data sources.
Reports &
Representations
Representation as afterthought to data
analysis; focus on matching reports to
publication options; primacy of
summary, report and argument
Great attention to issues of representation,
aesthetic ideals/principles; reports
designed for power and effect; primacy of
narrative, example and collage
Audiences
Specialized research community as
primary audience, but passing interest in
public and popular constituencies,
including policy-makers.
Public and popular constituencies as
primary audience, but passing interest in
specialized communities (policy makers,
researchers, research subjects, etc.)
Framing new
knowledge
New knowledge as extension,
complement, or alternative to existing
and explicit social theory
New knowledge as images, concepts,
perspectives that are new to public or to
targeted communities
Theory
building
Emphasis on propositions inscribed in
the social science research literature:
“competing propositions” as primary
content drama.
Emphasis on ideas and principles
embedded in public media and discourse;
“contrasting images” as primary content
drama.
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or from making and examining photographs of institutional events and routines; or
from working with young and old community members to mount an exhibition of
photographs and stories that document their neighborhoods and family traditions.
Reading something thoughtful can help teachers and other human service
professionals think about this kind of documentary inquiry. But community
members can conduct thoughtful, empirically sound and useful studies of local
culture and social life without having first reviewed the relevant social science
literature. The corollary also holds true: empirical studies of culture and social life
can generate valuable insights for local practitioners and clients without breaking
new ground for professional social scientists. (As a related matter: if we want
practitioner and community perspectives to become more visible within a research
literature, we'll have to do something more than support individuals in studying the
culture and social life of their own classrooms, schools, workplaces and local
communities – however valuable that might be to the people involved).
The contrasting merits of documentary study and social research as resources
for field-based professions extend as well to undergraduate curricula and students.
While social scientific knowledge is essential to an informed citizenry, so too are
documentary studies and the ability to think clearly about credible images of culture
and social life. And it’s naive to think that students can learn to assess these matter
thoughtfully without trying to construct credible images of their own. Whether
opportunities for that kind of experience fall under the rubric of visual studies,
documentary studies, field research, liberal arts, cultural studies, media studies or
social science may matter little. But engaging students in producing and questioning
the kinds of documentary studies I've examined here – and struggling with related
questions about evidence, representation, audience, imagery and ethics – represent a
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good investment in young people and civic culture, a better investment, perhaps,
than the kind of disciplinary specialization that stands in currently for a liberal arts
education.
Some sociologists and anthropologists have put recorded images to extremely
good use within their own research and teaching, and they have a lot to say about
how to approach these issues ethically and with good sense. However, and
understandably so, their work is directed typically towards advancing the field,
educating colleagues and orienting new members to their own discipline or
profession. It's quite another matter to educate citizens about the complexities of
visual representation and the promise of visual studies, or to acquaint them with
what it takes for photographs, films and video tapes to provide empirically sound
accounts of culture and social life. Being smart about that requires that we learn what
we can not only from social scientists, but from documentary photographers and film
makers, at least some of whom celebrate both art and empiricism and who aim for
both telling images and telling truths.
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40
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